Writing for the Chronicle of Higher Education, Thomas Hart Benton lists the seven deadly sins of today's undergraduates -- or, to be more precise, he argues that today's undergraduate culture is wholly oriented around committing, without knowing or caring, all of the seven sins at once. Benton saves pride for last, as he believes that it's at the root of all that is wrong with college students' much criticized and much deplored approach to learning. Here is what he has to say about pride on campus:

I once asked a group of 20 students how many thought they were "better than their parents"? All of them raised their hands. I didn't ask, but I assume they all believed they were better than their teachers too. They would rise higher, be more successful, and transcend the limitations of their elders. We read this belief in our students' expressions: "What you know is not worth learning. They're just your opinions anyway. I am young. I have infinite potential. You are old. And you're just a college professor. But I will be rich and famous someday." They have rarely been given a realistic assessment of their abilities and prospects. Out of this pride -- nurtured by the purveyors of unearned self-esteem, personal grievance, dumbed-down courses, and inflated grades (often in the guise of liberality) -- the opportunity to earn an education is squandered by prideful students who can make a potential heaven seem like hell.

I recently read C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, which collects the lectures Lewis delivered over BBC radio during World War II. Lewis was trying to remind an English public that had lost touch with Christianity how faith could help it cope with a world at war. But much of what he had to say resonates today, so much so that his words frequently transcend the question of belief altogether. It's not necessary, for example, to believe in God, or to believe in Lewis' God, to profit from what Lewis has to say about pride. The "essential vice," he writes, "the utmost evil, is Pride":

Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice:it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, 'How much do I dislike it when people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off?' The point is that each person's pride is in competition with every one else's pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive--is competitive by its very nature--while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.

....Power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers.

Benton's lens gains strength when refracted through that of Lewis. Lewis was concentrating on far larger questions than those that plague academic culture, and he was concentrating on them at a moment that was markedly different from our own. Even so, his description of how pride operates in pervasively anti-social ways, how it is bound up with a habit of hollow oneupmanship, and how it poisons the prideful person's ability to live meaningfully, goes a long way toward explaining what lies at the roots of the undisciplined and unselfconsciously vacuous culture of the contemporary campus.

But this is not to blame the victim, however proud he or she may be. College students today are flattered shamelessly, pandered to in every imaginable way. They believe they are God's gift because they are told they are (one entering Penn freshman this year commented that during her first week on campus, she was treated "like royalty"). Grade inflation is part of it; so are the absurdly luxurious amenities students have come to expect as campuses recreate themselves in the images of country clubs. What's shameful is that those who are charged with educating undergraduates tend so often to do the opposite, to confirm them in a smug conceit that can't even recognize itself for what it is. And that's what's finally so tragic--an entire generation of young adults is banking the future on a highly cultivated but ultimately false sense of pride, without even having the perspective to know it.

Erin:

I think that you have hit an important point: some things are wrong in and of themselves that can be known through reason and observation of the world around us.



Not just Pride, but Avarice drawing people into careers they are not suited to will be miserable in; Envy needlessly dividing people; and, of course, how much campus misery can be attributed to Lust replacing mature judgement?



Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony add their share to the dysfunctional campus.



Strange: in a scientific age people can not see the evidence in front of their own faces. Of course, that is the fruit of Pride.

Welcome back, Erin.

See my post Thanksgiving and Temporal Bigotry, which explores some roots of the attitudes described in the excerpt (and also includes another C S Lewis quote)

I've also linked your post at Photon Courier.

I've heard similar comments and complaints before, mostly on other blogs, and I'm convinced there is some truth to them. But, I suspect there is another side to the 'pride' displayed by at least some of these students. I know from personal experience, and from the experiences of other women I know and have known that the college years (I suppose like the middle and high school years, and even the post college years) can be a time of tremendous self-doubt, insecurity, and even self-hatred. Many girls and women do an excellent job of hiding this. For some, these issues are only revealed in drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, cutting, or involvement in abusive relationships. I wonder if some of this pride is just a cover?

I agree whole-heartedly with Erin's statement: "Arrogance and self-absorption are carefully cultivated in them from their early years by a culture that increasingly mistakes confidence for ability..." I would only point out that the academy is no exception to this.

But still, I am pretty certain God would strike me down if I ever thought, much less said, I was better than my parents...